Instinct
by In-the-Synthflesh
Summary: One-shot focusing on the deaths of Quent Yaiden and Toboe, written from Quent's perspective as he realises there is far more to wolves than he could have ever believed.


One-shot covering Quent Yaiden's last moments with Toboe and Blue (roughly the end of episode 28 through to the beginning of episode 29). Written because, well, I came to _Wolf's Rain_ for the wolves (Toboe being my favourite), and found myself staying for the supporting characters as much as the leads. Thanks in advance for any reviews, etc. The heretic that I am, I transcribed the dialogue as per the English dub (simply because I didn't have the subtitled version to work from), but some of it is omitted anyway because this is intended to be an internal monologue. Apologies for any unevenness in the pacing: I started writing it from the middle(!)

If every dog can have his day in fanfiction land, so can every trigger-happy booze hound. Enjoy!

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**Instinct**

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'Whatever you are, I know a wolf's eye when I see it. When a human loses something precious to him, he loses his soul along with it. Do you know what that's _like_?'

I'm looking Darcia square in the face. Not going to give that monster the satisfaction of seeing me shrink away when he takes my life. Forcing myself to hold onto my nerve, I focus on the small consolation that he won't last long himself: Jaguara's poison has seen to that. A thin trail of blood leaks out behind him from an unseen wound, darkening the hem of his long purple cloak. This time he won't live another day to gloat. He's going to die right here in the land of the devil, and it won't matter who kills him. He and those flea-bitten monsters I've been chasing since Freeze Citycan all lie down together and rot for all I care.

The concussion I suffered when I jumped in front of the car to save Blue feels like it's come back with a vengeance all of a sudden, and I have one bitch of a migraine. Funny thing about this particular migraine is, it makes people look like wolves. When I came to and found Blue at my side a little while ago, I saw a whole pack of them leering at me. A moment ago there was a boy at my heels nagging me; but he vanished mid-sentence, and standing beside me now with its back arched and its hair on end is a reddish-brown wolf, snarling at Darcia. Hell, maybe everybody I've bumped into on this crazy journey is really a wolf, or maybe none of them are. Why not? Either of those possibilities would be a fitting punch line to this sick joke I've been living for the past few years. If what I've heard about humans being descended from wolves is true, neither should come as a huge surprise.

In any case, I don't need to know the truth. This has gone far beyond looking for the truth. Like I said to the boy, I've got something to love that I lost and something to hate, and that's all I need to hold onto. For a human, that's purpose enough. Who's to say that I've been pursuing the wrong path when it's what I believe in? Whether you're searching for paradise or seeking revenge on an unknown enemy, it's all comes down to dumb faith in something for which there's no real proof.

What matters, I tell myself in my last moments, is that I have died with dignity and integrity. I have died staying true to what I've always believed.

As Darcia draws a gun from his cloak, I raise my rifle. My arms are shaking. The lens on the sight distorts my aim more than it focuses it. I hardly notice him drop his arm to one side. The growls of the red wolf at my side become almost deafening.

And in that instant, I make a terrible mistake. The world's spinning too fast in front of me, so I close my eyes to try to steady myself at the moment when I finally pull the trigger. An ear-splitting yelp darts through the sky. Daring to open my eyes, I realise why Darcia drew his gun away from me so calmly. The imminence of his own death has given him fresh confidence and afforded him a luxury neither the wolf nor I have. Whether it comes by poison or by bullet, his fate is sealed. Without the same certainty, without that kamikaze coolness, we are far more vulnerable than him, and at the crucial moment, both the wolf's and my nerves broke. By the time I had applied the slightest pressure to the trigger, it was already too late. The wolf had lunged forward and leapt directly into my line of fire.

The wolf's body seems to take forever to hit the ground. The rifle trembles out of my hands.

Stupid kid, stupid kid! Why the hell did he jump out in front of me like that? Why'd he make me get in the way? Why'd he make me do a dumb thing like that? I told that damn kid to leave me alone! Why didn't he listen to me?

Christ, he's only a _child_.

The sight of the wounded creature, now returned before my eyes to the form of a teenage boy probably no older than seventeen, struck a chord deep inside me. Incongruously, my mind shoots back to a random fragment from the past: a stuffed teddy bear, abandoned under a tree near my old house. I usually overlooked whatever my son Russ left lying around the place unless it was in my way, but for some reason that image has stayed with me. Not so long afterwards I saw the bear again, lying facedown in what remained of Russ's room, the fur ablaze and the stitching popping open under the pressure of the heat.

I stumble forward and trip up to the wolf's transformed body, panting heavily. The puncture in his side is deep and pumping out a steady stream of fresh black blood. I can hardly breathe.

I hear Darcia thumb down the safety on his gun. I'm not ready. Not like this-

Lightning-fast, the young wolf leaps back to life, swings his jaws to the side and drives his teeth into Darcia's arm. The power of the animal's motion is startling. It's barely an adult and thin as a rake, but it twists in the air like a hooked salmon under its own strength, as if its whole body were one long, infinitely flexible muscle. I've stood face to face with this young wolf before. That time, I saw the panic in its eyes as it stood frozen to the spot. Now it has mastered its own strength. Its wild eyes strain until only the whites are visible, teeming with rage. I know just by gazing into those eyes that this sudden aggression involves no reasoning, no hesitation, no weighing-up of potential options. It's pure instinct taking over, and what I can't believe, after all that's happened and all that I've told myself over the years, is that this wolf's gut instinct is to_ protect me_.

What the hell is going on here?

Darcia doesn't even glance at the animal hanging from his wrist, even as its teeth draw arterial bursts from his flesh. His eyes are fixed on me the whole time, even when he flings his assailant to one side with a smooth sweep of his arm that spatters the ground around us with blood, some his, some of it the wolf's. I briefly spot a yellowed fang embedded in his sleeve, imprinted there by the rigor mortis strength of the young wolf's bite. I say his sleeve: it's uncertain where the fabric stops and his flesh begins. Darcia knows I can't see the beast that lurks behind that left eye of his, but I can sure as hell smell the filthy bastard. Don't need to be at some higher state of evolution to pick up on that stink. It's never once left my nostrils since that night, just as the same piercing stare has always been looking right back at me each time I close my eyes.

What I can never forget and what I hate most about the stare is the total lack of malice. There's nothing in those eyes. No hatred, no morality, not even any enjoyment in the destruction he wreaks. Both the human and the wolf eye are like the unseeing glass eyes of a doll. As they look down at me now, as they looked at me before from atop the wreckage of Kyrios, I know that any suggestion that they even acknowledge me is just projection on my part. Humanising what can never be humanised. Darcia's gaze was horribly pure. He claimed to empathise with my remorse and agony. Huh, what an idea. Makes my blood run cold.

Then suddenly the two things overlap – the death of my wife and son, the death of this young one here. In both instances, Darcia had the option of taking an old man's life, but instead he allowed a boy to die. Because a boy has hardly begun to live, but an old man thinks he has made it through all of life's great struggles and dares to become resigned and happy. And I _was_ happy. When I think back it's like remembering another life that seems to bear no relation to my present one, but I know that I was happy – but take away a man's happiness when he thinks he's found closure, and you throw him into a special kind of torment.

All this time, I've been searching for my own death. I've wanted to die ever since I came back from the woods to find my village burning to the ground, but I've always been denied it. Now I'll take it by force. I'll take back the death I should have had so long ago by your hand, Darcia, whether you like it or not.

With the same instinctual motion that briefly re-animated the wolf's body, I whip my pistol out and fire. Redness buds just below Darcia's shoulder and runs treacle-slow down his chest. He doesn't react at all, doesn't even recoil from the impact of the bullet. I glance away at the young wolf in desperation. It lies motionless behind him, its chestnut coat now soaked with blood. The weak sunlight that pushes through the overcast sky catches the silver bangles around its right forepaw. The human affectation catches me off guard. I only just notice another gleam out of the corner of my eye as Darcia raises his own gun.

When I next move, it's as if things were underwater. I begin to react, but I'm much too late, much too slow and stupid. The bullet bores into my side and the pain blazes outwards like a hot white light that quickly fills my entire body. I'm down. The rough surface of the stony ground, licked raw and rough by some glacier as ancient as the wolves, it scratches my face, but I barely notice. My gun skids across the rock-face and out of arm's reach. I haven't yet fully registered what has just happened to me. Just like the rest of me, my mind is numb from the searing cold and- And what? All I know now is the cold and the pain, and they expand to become my whole world. Everything else momentarily fades to black as the crimson rivers of that world run out from me and drain down into the fissures and depressions in the stone.

In some sense, this is familiar territory for me. Whenever someone'd say to me that I take my health for granted and that I ought to be more careful with what I put into my body, well, they're only half right. Truth is, I was never more conscious of my insides than when I hit the bottle. What kept me keen in those years after the fire was the feeling of my own body crumbling away and gradually shutting up. It added urgency to what I was doing. Way I figured, a short life centred on revenge was infinitely preferable to a long one spent grieving for my family. You and I are cut from the same cloth, young beast. Only thing we know to do when the chips are down and your mind's gone to hell is keep fighting. The only difference is, you did it out of bravery. I did it to forget.

This isn't about my family. It hasn't been for a long time, though that was how it started. I had wanted to restore justice. I may have been Sheriff in Kyrios, but it wasn't exactly a hard place to police. Petty crime mostly. The social decay and disorder that had seized the larger cities where the world had already begun to die hadn't reached my village until that terrible night. If I failed to avenge my family, I had no right ever being on the force. So I pushed myself harder and harder, and when the grief hit home, when I should've stopped and allowed myself to mourn I blotted it out with drink. It came to be that whenever I thought I was on the verge of getting close to the murderer, I'd already long forgotten about the victims.

Kept telling myself the only way to serve my wife and child's memory was to find the one who killed them and make him pay. I wonder sometimes if I would've given up this search any sooner had I never looked up at what remained of my house in Kyrios that night, not seen those creatures staring down through the sheets of rising smoke and ash. Sharp cruel snouts, ragged manes, bodies and feet broader than any dog's, the orange fringe of the flames dancing in the wide black pools of their pupils. Wolves. A foe that, for so long, I thought might only exist in fairy tales had sprung out of the pages of myth and seized everything I held dear. A campaign that in any other context would be nothing more than a killing spree became a sort of horrible holy quest. It was so perfect, so romantic. Everywhere I went, the barflies and pub owners bored enough to strike up a conversation with me and ask where I was from and where I was headed didn't believe me. I got laughed out of inns god knows how many times. Didn't matter. Those hopeless bums had never set a foot outside whichever godforsaken town they'd ended up stranded in. They didn't know a thing about the endless deserts, the chilled wastelands where I'd almost died a month or so ago or the faraway corners of the earth where an older generation of man dressed in cattleskin and tattooed with red paint worships the bear and holds council with spirits. Chances are they'll only get a taste of that other world when it finally floods in and consumes every other isolated shitheap of a city just like it did mine.

Besides, I always had Blue. If the albatross ever weighed too heavily on my shoulders or the glimpse of my family's murderers began to fade, I only needed to look at her and my hope and determination would return. The memory of Kyrios was stamped into her eyes. She understood, and was always patient with me. As we walked the streets of a lonely and anonymous city looking for a place to stay overnight where the landlord didn't think I was crazy, I'd feel her muzzle rub against my knee and her tongue stretch out to lap at my hand. Her hot moist breath puffed against my fingers as a relaxed moan escaped her throat.

_Don't worry, pops. We both know they're all wrong. We can travel the whole world and never find anyone else who understands, but I'll always be here for you. I don't mind sleeping rough._

Blue. I'm so sorry.

'Mister?'

I recoil from my inner world. Darcia has vanished. I spot the injured wolf straining to hoist itself up onto its forepaws, only it isn't a wolf anymore. Instead, I see the same red-haired boy who was running after me moments before dragging himself away from the blood-stained ground where he had fallen. My arm flops towards him and onto the ground. My own strength has already ebbed farther than his, and I can't keep my arm raised in the air, let alone crawl towards him. Why I need to reach out and hold him to me, I can't explain. Maybe I don't want to die alone. Maybe I want to close my hands around his throat and break his neck as payback for all the miles I've had to run in pursuit of him and his pack.

The boy starts to hobble towards me, groaning. He holds up one of his hands near his chest: to compress the bullet-hole in his lung, to keep pressure off a wounded leg by keeping his paw aloft? Tears of effort collect in a pair of eyes too luminous a shade of brown to be human. His lips quiver.

'I-I'm sorry…'

'Don't apologise,' I murmur. '_I_'m the one who pulled the trigger.'

The boy keeps on talking in that thin reedy voice, his face contorted in pain and frustration. 'I gave my word to Blue that I'd look out for you. I promised. I told her I'd protect you … b-but I couldn't. I'm – _I'm so_ _sorry_.' He chokes back a quiet sob. 'I wish I could have stayed at your side and watched over you, like Blue did, for the rest of my life. I wish we all could have gone to paradise _together_.'

A foot away from me he gives up and slumps forward. The wolf returns. He stopped just close enough for the tip of his chin to fall upon my outstretched arm. I roll my arm down far enough so that his whole head is able to rest comfortably on my bicep. I begin to stroke his neck. It is the last movement I'll ever manage below my neck. I expected his fur to be coarse and matted, but as I run my gloved hand through it it feels beautifully soft, almost downy. A strong perfume rises off his coat that smells of earth. I think I see a weak smile of gratitude flutter across his black gums.

'Let me sleep here … for a while.'

Like a ripple on the surface of a lake, his small voice breaks and his face becomes still and calm. The powerful muscles of his jaw melt into slackness and his eyes close. I lie there for a moment, watching him pass. The weight of his head on my arm feels familiar somehow, and I wrack my brains, wondering why I recognise that scent. He doesn't smell like Blue. I shut my eyes and try to remember. His thick fur yields smoothly to my touch as I continue to stroke him. I happen to brush the hair on his scruff backwards. My fingertips come into contact with his skin. The warmth of it feels just like being someplace safe and protected. It puts me in mind somehow of those quiet winter nights when Blue and I would sit side by side at the hearth, thawing out our frostbitten feet after a long evening catching rabbits for the pot.

Of course.

'It was you. I get it now.' My hand comes to a rest across his narrow shoulders. 'It was you, there in the snow.'

You could have left me to die. You had no reason to protect me. You stayed, knowing all the while that if I came around whilst you lay in my arms I'd shoot you through the head without a moment's hesitation, and that even if I didn't wake up too soon, I would still chase what remains of your kind to the ends of the Earth.

Why? What could have possibly stopped the same ravenous jaws that hung before me in my every nightmare from killing me? I can see from the way your ribs poke through your skin, visible even through the thick layer of hair on your belly, that you didn't have so much to eat on your travels that you wouldn't think much of picking off a human or two. Did Blue tell you not to hurt me, even after I pushed her away? Have I mistaken those silver rings around your leg for a shackle or a keepsake from a village you once stormed for food when really they're a gift from a human? A human who loved you and who you loved back?

Could it be that wolves know mercy?

You'll never tell me why. You're already a whole world away from me, buried deep in your last dream. But, I think I can guess.

'You saved me, boy.'

A shower of cries settle around us like a flock of crows. I can't focus on the faces of the speakers, but the name Toboe is repeated several times, half-shouted, half-barked. Several figures kneel around us. More voices dance across the abyss on the wind, coming closer. I hear Hubb, that old lovesick Detective Dandy, sob 'Oh please, no! Quent? Oh, _god_-'

Hah, Hubb and his stupid allergies: his eyes and nose are already streaming, even at the sight of a _dead_ dog.

Suddenly, I feel a hand press on my waist. I look up to see who it is, and a face comes into view, wavering and vague. I'm struck again by the kind of double-vision you get when you see an object far off in a desert, distorted by heat waves, an object you never want to get too close to in case it turns out to be nothing more than a mirage. One moment I see a dog with an inky black coat, the very edges of which look blue where the sun glows through the thin tips of each individual hair. The next moment, I see a girl, a young woman with olive skin whose hair is the same colour as the dog's iridescent fur. Her lips are parted slightly in fear and shock.

Is that you, old girl?

Standing over me is this beautiful woman I can hardly bear to look at. This ain't the real you, Blue. I can't imagine how confused you must've been your whole life. Content in the collar, but with this ancient force you didn't understand always pulsing through you, raging under your skin. I got to thinking in that time we were apart that it was that inner torment that kept us together. I had my secrets to chase and hide from, and so did you. Hunting and burying, hunting and burying, over and over. Whilst I was sat in some bombsite of a bar drinking my past away every evening of every day I spent trying to confront that past, you were sat there every bit as conflicted as I was. Haunted by a primal flash in your mother's eye, some alpha in heat reduced to rutting with a stray husky and wondering if she was the last of her kind.

I never got to finish what I wanted to say before. If I'd had the strength and the heart at that moment, I would've told you that you're not my dog anymore, Blue; you're so much more than that. You need to be free, because I'm keeping you from being all you can be, all you are. Wherever there are humans you'll just end up trying to disguise yourself as one, and that's not the way it should be. Not for you, and not for your friends either.

All my ears hear is the whine of a dog, but what my heart hears are the words, 'Don't go…' I can't help smiling.

It could never have ended any other way. Got a jagged old rock for my deathbed, a blood-soaked coat for my shroud and a bunch of random acquaintances I stumbled across while on the road to mourn me. But most importantly, you came back to me, Blue. Not 'cause you're some dumb mongrel on a leash that doesn't know any better.

Because you have the loyal heart of a wolf.


End file.
